KATHMANDU, FEBRUARY 24

China's mars probe Tianwen 1 has entered the preset parking orbit above the red planet on Wednesday, in a bid to successfully land later in May.

Tianwen 1, which comprises of an orbiter, a lander and a rover, will circle around this orbit for three months, and then will release its landing capsule, shared China National Space Administration in a release today.

It stated, 'The spacecraft conducted its third near-Mars deceleration manoeuvre at 6:29 am and then moved into an orbit with a perigee of about 280 kilometres.'

In the period of three months before landing, the probe's orbiter will prepare itself for its upcoming job in Mars.

The rover's main job is to land in May or June; for this the administration has chosen the southern part of Mars' Utopia Planitia, which is a large plain within Utopia, the largest recognised impact basin in the solar system to conduct scientific surveys.

Other than that, the mission includes tasks such as mapping geology and morphology of the red planet, study the Martian soil, and explore the distribution of Martian water ice.

Tianwen 1 is the world's 46th Mars exploration mission since October 1960, when the former Soviet Union launched the first Mars-bound spacecraft. It is said that only 18 of those missions were successful.

The probe had entered the orbit of Mars on February 10, listing China as one of the five space agencies (United States, European Union, India, United Arab Emirates and China) to do so. It was launched on July 23, 2020 by a Long March 5 heavy-lift carrier rocket from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province, China.